The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to its talk as part of the
Departmental Colloquium series
By
Marko Nardini (Durham University)
Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 17:00 - 18:30
Host: Jozsef Fiser
Perceptual development as optimisation of inference
To survive, organisms must deal with many kinds of uncertainty, such as recognising
objects given partial or uncertain information, or planning an action (e.g. reaching for a
cup) with an uncertain outcome. Recent evidence suggests that the adult nervous system
meets these challenges by implementing or approximating principles of Bayesian Decision
Theory (BDT), which provides optimal solutions to problems of perception and action under
uncertainty. This raises the interesting possibility that the long developmental
trajectory for some perceptual skills in childhood can be understood as a process of
optimisation of inference. I will present results from recent studies in support of this
idea, showing that key elements of BDT are not in place until remarkably late in childhood
- in perceptual tasks, motor tasks, and brain circuits. Even in quite simple tasks such as
judging the layout of 3D surfaces, we see that sub-optimal computation (as distinct from
noise) makes a major contribution to children's relatively low performance. These
results provide a starting point for investigating the processes of development and
learning by which the nervous system optimises its perception and action abilities.
Progress on this problem has important future applications to atypical development,
sensory / motor rehabilitation, and the design of intelligent agents who can learn from
their environment.
Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Oktober 6 street 7, room 101.
See more at:
https://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/events/2017-10-18/departmental-colloquium-…
We are looking forward to see you there!
Cognitive Science Events at CEU:
http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/events
Györgyné Finta (Réka)
Department Coordinator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Central European University
Department of Cognitive Science
H-1051 Budapest
Oktober 6 utca 7.
tel: (36-1) 887-5138
fax: (36-1) 887-5010
http://www.ceu.edu
http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu
______________________________________________
Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu
Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu